Charlie Junior winner of the greenhouse in master of planter of fresh trees's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Charlie Junior stood in the greenhouse doorway with three angry buyers on the gravel and a wooden crate of unlabeled saplings between them. The tallest man held up a sapling by its burlap ball. "You sold my brother a red maple last spring. It came up a silver birch. What is this one?" Charlie Junior did not know. The saplings looked alike at this age. His father had left him the greenhouse to build into the region's most trusted source for rare trees, and Charlie Junior could not name the tree in the man's hand. "Come back tomorrow," he said. "I'll have an answer." The buyers left. Charlie Junior walked the rows between the wooden planters under the glass roof. Hanging pots dripped on his shoulders. He had over two hundred saplings inside, sorted by size, not by parent. He had bought seed from four different foresters this season. He had written nothing down. He sat on an overturned bucket and thought about what he actually knew. Every sapling had come from one cone. Every cone had come from one tree. If he could not walk back from sapling to tree, no buyer would trust him twice. He took a lantern to the toolshed and found a stack of thin cedar offcuts from the sawmill. He cut them into tags with his pocket knife. He mixed lampblack and boiled linseed oil into a rough ink. Then he pulled out the ledger his mother used for seed orders and turned to a blank page. He worked through the night. He gave each parent tree a number. Tree 1 was the ink pine on the scriptorium porch. Tree 2 was the black walnut behind the sawmill. He kept going until he reached thirty-one. For each number he wrote the species, the location of the parent, and the date he had collected seed. Then he went sapling by sapling. He questioned every planter box. Where had this batch been sown? Which sack had the seed come from? Some he could trace with certainty. Twenty-two he could not. He carried those twenty-two to a separate bench by the door and marked them UNKNOWN in fresh ink. At dawn he tied a cedar tag to every stem in the greenhouse. Numbered saplings on the rows. Unknown saplings on the bench. The three buyers came back at noon. Charlie Junior walked the tall man to row four. He lifted a tag. "Tree 7. Sugar maple. Parent stands at the north edge of the plow fields. Seed collected September last. I can take you to the tree." The man studied the tag. He set his sapling down and pointed at the bench by the door. "What about those?" "Those I won't sell you," Charlie Junior said. "Not until I know." The man paid for two numbered saplings and left satisfied. Charlie Junior looked at the twenty-two UNKNOWN tags on the bench. His system worked. Now a third of his stock was worthless until he could trace it back.